"Chiun's latest kick-or it was before he discovered the Home Shopping Network."
"He what?"
"Look, let's stay on the subject. You can have your heart attack when the charge card bills come in."
Smith sighed, sounding like a leaky steam valve. "Theodore Soars-With-Eagles has called upon the federal government to help head off the coming HELP epidemic."
"Why doesn't that surprise me?"
"The new Vice President has heard his appeals and made a plea to the new President. He has asked us to look into it."
"Isn't this kinda flaky? Don't we have better things to do like-and here is major hint number 334-taking care of the quack who likes to help sick old ladies commit suicide?"
"The Dr. Mordaunt Gregorian matter is still under review."
"Call him Dr. Doom like everybody else. And I want a crack at him."
"Later."
"Don't we have the right to refuse dippy missions from the President?"
"We do," admitted Smith. "But the President has had a good look at our operating budget, and he is eyeing us for cutbacks."
"Wait'll he finds out Chiun just doubled the budget in one shopping day," Remo said.
Smith groaned. Then he said, "I have decided it would be politic to look into this."
"Chiun isn't going to like this," Remo warned.
Chiun, in the middle of unpacking a juice machine, straightened to demand, "What am I not going to like?"
Remo grinned and saw his chance. "Smitty wants us to look into the bug-eaters who are dying out in California," he said and waited for the wail of outraged complaint.
Instead, the Master of Sinanju said amiably, "Inform Emperor Smith that we will be happy to meet with the unfortunates who are reduced to eating bugs."
"We will?"
Chiun nodded. "Happily."
Remo glowered and said into the phone, "Just tell me what I absolutely have to know, Smitty."
"Their headquarters is called Nirvana West, which is a commune of sorts near the town of Ukiah, north of San Francisco. It was jointly founded by Brother Karl Sagacious and Theodore Soars-With-Eagles."
"Soars-With-Eagles?"
"He claims to be a Chinchilla Indian."
"Chinchilla?"
"According to the newspapers, that is his tribe's name. Although I must admit, his features do not appear very Indian."
"Wait a minute. Are we talking American Indian or East Indian?"
"American. "
"I played cowboys and Indians all over Newark as a kid, Smitty, and I never heard of any Chinchilla tribe. And whoever heard of an Indian brave named Theodore?"
"It's possible Theodore Soars-With-Eagles is a white man with some Chinchilla blood in him," said Smith.
"It's possible he's full of wampum too."
"There has been bad blood between the Sagacious faction and the Eagles faction of PAPA," Smith went on. "Eagles has ample motivation to have done away with Sagacious. Look into that angle, Remo. It may all be a tawdry power struggle in a fringe group. You will go in as investigators from the Food and Drug Administration, and mingle with the federal scientists who are already on site."
"Anything else?"
"Yes. Keep your expenditures to a minimum." And Harold Smith hung up.
Remo hung up too and turned in time to see the Master of Sinanju running a blob of Silly Putty through his juice machine.
"Since when are you all hot to watch a bunch of lunatics in their natural element?" he asked Chiun.
"Since I have gotten tired of watching the old lunatics," replied the Master of Sinanju, lifting the lid and looking in to see the interesting concoction he had just created.
Chapter 4
It had all started on the opening day of school.
Five-year-old Kevin O'Rourke had been looking forward to school for a long time-almost three weeks, since his mother had first sat him down to explain kindergarten to him.
Kevin O'Rourke was an exceptional child. All mothers think their offspring are exceptional. Mrs. Bernadette O'Rourke was no different. She thought young Kevin quite a lad. And he was the spitting image of his dear father, like herself a native-born Irishman, but who fought for his adopted country, the U.S.A., in the Gulf War and died in a Scud missile attack, God rest his soul.
Young Kevin looked exactly like Patrick-the young Patrick whom Bernadette could still conjure up in her mind's eye whenever she thought back to the tiny Irish village of Dingle where they had grown up together. Kevin had the same open face; what one day would be the same fierce Catholic faith, the same stubbornness, but also the same willingness to trust others.
He made her feel proud even through her sharp loss.
And so on the day she drove him to the Walter F. Mondale Grammar School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Mrs. Bernadette O'Rourke rode on a cushion of air. Oh, she was not without motherly pangs. For one thing, there had been no one with whom to talk over her decision to send Kevin to a public school instead of Catholic school. It had been an economic decision, really. The truth was she was already working two jobs and didn't have even the modest tuition the parochial schools charged. There were scholarships, certainly. Unfortunately, they didn't have any for Americans like Kevin O'Rourke. He was the wrong color for scholarships.
But this was Minneapolis, after all, where the public schools were supposed to be very good. Not like New York, where they had to have metal detectors in the school doorways to weed out the hooligans with their guns and their knives.
Mrs. Bernadette O'Rourke shivered at the very thought. Even in the north of Ireland-she was from the south-they didn't have it so terrible.
There was a crowd in front of the school when she pulled up.
"Who are all those people, Mommy?" asked Kevin with those innocent blue eyes.
"Other mommies bringing their wee children," said Mrs. O'Rourke, but when she got Kevin out of the car she noticed an unusual number of very old ladies present. They were well past childbearing age. They looked too old to be teachers, to be sure. Perhaps they were grandmothers, she thought. The Lord alone knew how many mothers had to work these days.
Mrs. O'Rourke took little Kevin by his moist hand and led him up the walk to the school door entrance where the old ladies seemed to be concentrated. They carried old cigar boxes hung with what looked like colored balloons without air in them.
Little Kevin thought so too.
"Bawoons," he cried, pointing.
An old woman in a purple hat stepped up and smiled with teeth yellowed from too much tea and not enough brushing and asked, "Would you like one, sonny?"
"Yes!"
And the woman handed little Kevin O'Rourke a blue foil packet that said "genuine latex" on it.
Only then did Mrs. O'Rourke recognize the limp multicolored things hanging off the old lady's cigar box for what they were.
"Good God, madam! Are ye daft? Do ye not realize what it is ye be handing out to the boy?"
"It's for his own good," replied the woman in a snippy voice. "Here, peewee, let me help you with that," she told the boy.
And before Mrs. O'Rourke's horrified eyes, the old woman dug apart the foil packet and unrolled a lubricated latex condom that was a watermelon red.
"Madam!" Mrs. O'Rourke said huffily, snatching the thing before Kevin could touch it. "What is the matter with ye now?"
"I want my bawoon," said little Kevin, the tears already starting in his young eyes.
"It's not a balloon," his mother and the old woman said in the same breath. Only Mrs. O'Rourke's tone was angry. The old woman's was exasperated.
The old woman fingered one of the garish things as if it were rosary beads. "It's a condom, young man. Can you say con-dom?"
"Madam!"
"It's not to play with," the old woman went on primly. "It's for little boys to know about so when they become naughty men they don't cause diseases in nice young ladies."
"I won't be naughty," Kevin promised. "Can I have my bawoon now?"